PROGRESSIVISM

Progressive Movement

• Aimed to return control of the gov. to the people, restore economic opportunities, and correct injustices of American life. **

Promoting Moral Improvement• Prohibition: Banning of

alcohol• Why? **

– Immigrants / poor needed to improve their lives’

– Domestic violence, rape, murder, child abuse, suicide, divorce

– Spearheaded by the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU)

Economic Reform

• Big business received large amounts of $$ from government official and politcians.

• Muckrakers: ** journalists who wrote about the corrupt side of business

Protecting Working Children

• Children were hired because of their size and were paid less.**

• Progressives were able to get laws past in nearly every state to ban child labor

Limit Working Hours

• Supreme Court limited working hours of women to 10 h/d

• Beginning of businesses paying benefits to families who lost a loved one on the job.

Reforming Elections

• Initiative: bill originated by the people (not lawmakers)

• Referendum: vote on an initiative

• Recall: Process of removing an elected official.

• 17th Amendment: direct election of U.S. Senators. **

Women and Reform

• Susan B. Anthony: lead the suffrage movement.

• Three approaches to gain suffrage:**– Pressure state gov.– The courts– A constitutional

amendment.

• 19th Amendment:** Women the right to vote (1920)

Roosevelt’s Square Deal**

• Trustbusting– Trusts: legal bodies

created to hold stock in many companies.

• Regulating Foods and Drugs– Labels on all

packaged foods and drugs.

• Conversation and Natural Resources